For this project, once the basic idea was formed, the story and script came together rather quickly, but the financial strategy went through several stages of revision. As I’ve said before, short filmmaking in my experience is not exactly a profit machine, and since I’m funding this short with contributions from mostly friends and family, I didn’t want to put forth any investor plan listing out a certain return on investment because suggesting a probable return seemed disingenuous. I do see this short as a possible ending to a feature length project (something that I am currently developing in my spare time), so I discussed the idea with my produce of treating the investors of the relatively inexpensive short as first in investors for the feature, but the points distribution of two different properties was unmanageable.
Further complicating issues for my poor producer was that I always wanted the short to somehow raise donations for Parkinson’s disease research in addition to rewarding my investors. After several other financial strategies that were nearly impossible logistically or unfair to the investors, we decided to try and make the project a fully non-profit endeavor. Although this might have been the obvious option now, I was excited about it because it seemed to be a route that allowed us to achieve all our financial goals for the project. It gives the donors an immediate tax deduction upon contributing to the budget, allows the production to stretch that budget further with contractors and merchants, and allows us to donate our proceeds to PD research.
However, deciding to be a non-profit venture was not without its own set of challenges and logistical hurdles. Should we try to form our own 501(c) or try to join an existing non-profit? If we join one, how much percentage of our donations are we willing to give up? Should it be a film based non-profit or a PD related non-profit and if so would they even want to be associated with our short film with its admittedly contentious story?
I have long been a huge fan of Michael J. Fox (my siblings are children of the 80’s remember) and read his book Lucky Man years before my parents were diagnosed with PD. I respect and have been personally affected and positively reassured by the positive and hopeful message that he and his foundation emanate. I knew before we decided to be a non-profit that I wanted to be involved with the Michael J. Fox Foundation even if it was only donating whatever proceeds we could raise with the film. I know that the MJFF utilizes all of its available funds for research (something I respect) and wouldn’t be able to contribute financially to our short, nor would I want to take away funding from the MJFF with my project, but I was hoping (perhaps naively) that they might have a mechanism for sponsoring projects like mine or even some networking resources to point us in the right direction.
I heard that one of my friends from school (University of Virginia) was working for the foundation at the time, so I contacted Katie Peabody at the Michael J. Fox Foundation. It was about 4pm EST on Friday, and Katie had just come off the Foundation's huge week of meetings with their various councils and boards. She was running on about forty-five minutes of sleep, but still, she brainstormed with me for a couple of hours about how we could do this.
Finally she says to me, “I have an idea, but I’m going into the subway and will have to call you back.” I figured she’d call me back after the weekend, but in 40 minutes Katie called me back after having spoken with a member of the MJFF Patient Counsel with his own PD related non-profit foundation, who was very interested in my project and potentially willing to sponsor us with non-profit status from his foundation.
Now, we are in the final stages of finalizing our agreement with him and his foundation to become a fully non-profit venture, and when that occurs or short will move from “development” to “pre-production.” Stay tuned…
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